At the same time, it's very easy to hand wave away real problems as a "vocal minority that just happens to be posting on forums".
Certainly also true. Population balance seems to be a significant issue currently. I know we've gotten a large influx of players from other servers in Revive, who unanimously express how much nicer and busier our Exile side is than what they had left.
Edit: TotP context
Tynnan on
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
I loved the 1-50 play to death. It was pretty much all fun, though a little grindy a couple times. I played the whole way with my wife though, so your mileage may vary.
While I'd probably be totally fine with the current end game if I was playing mostly solo, it's not really possibly for my wife. She's not a stellar player so she'd never be able to manage raiding or dungeons, perhaps adventures, but I just eliminated most of the end game right there.
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
I'll check things out after a month or two when maybe they've stabilized things and my emotions have had a chance to settle down so I don't feel like everything was my fault. I really love what they are trying to do but I think this was a case of their "eyes being bigger than their stomachs" Also behind the scenes it seems like there really isn't a culture of accountability for things. They're very open about what went wrong and why things happen but they drop a lot of hints that communication between studio departments is rather poor so they end up apologizing for things that shouldn't have been an issue before going behind each other's backs to fix it.
PSN: Waybackkidd
"...only mights and maybes."
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
Oh, @Eisenhide and @Tayrun, here is the video I mentioned last night showing Voodoo's world second System Daemons kill:
MMOs cost so much to make and we're all sick of WOW and just want something new. The standards for MMOs are so insanely high. Wildstar didn't live up to the expectations of many so I'm not too surprised to hear lots of negativity. Some people in this thread have said that we need to accept not all MMOs have to last for years. If you spend a couple months leveling up and doing some dungeons and quitting it's fine as long as you had fun for those two months. I still have the mindset that MMOs last for years it's hard to get out of my head, it's one of the reasons why I like MMOs. They're these worlds you can sucked into for years at a time instead of some 12 hour single player game.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
MMOs cost so much to make and we're all sick of WOW and just want something new. The standards for MMOs are so insanely high. Wildstar didn't live up to the expectations of many so I'm not too surprised to hear lots of negativity. Some people in this thread have said that we need to accept not all MMOs have to last for years. If you spend a couple months leveling up and doing some dungeons and quitting it's fine as long as you had fun for those two months. I still have the mindset that MMOs last for years it's hard to get out of my head, it's one of the reasons why I like MMOs. They're these worlds you can sucked into for years at a time instead of some 12 hour single player game.
What, specifically, are you not satisfied with? I ask because generalized posts like this get seen by new players who may or may not share those expectations. It's much more useful to go into a bit more detail and say what's not working for you, in particular, and whether those problems are something with a fix on the way (see Rune system), whether they're tougher to solve (population imbalance, raid logistics), or whether they're intrinsic to the game (content difficulty).
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I used to have that mindset, but now I'm perfectly happy with buying an MMO and getting a month or two of play out of it. Sometimes they last longer (the obvious example being WoW, though FF14 is headed up that list for me as well), but sometimes they don't.
Anyone have any luck dealing with customer support, I am still trying to find out why my account is terminated and after 9 days it is still being reviewed. I can not even reply to anything in their forums let alone start a topic. I enjoyed the game but might have to bite the bullet and either try playing another MMO or buy again and resub (last resort I had already preordered and paid for the deluxe)
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Which Exile starting zone do most people prefer? Dominion side I much preferred the Levian Bay path, if that gives you some insight in to my preferences.
Which Exile starting zone do most people prefer? Dominion side I much preferred the Levian Bay path, if that gives you some insight in to my preferences.
Algoroc is faster, Celestion is larger. Both have equal amounts of story exposition, and both are bright and flashy compared to the dismal rainy Ellevar.
So you could go with either one really.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
From my understanding Algoroc leads to a kind of wild west zone after it? If so, that's the one I'll choose.
From my understanding Algoroc leads to a kind of wild west zone after it? If so, that's the one I'll choose.
Algoroc and Celestion both lead to Galeras. Algoroc is a wild west style zone, very frontiery. Galeras has that a bit too, but it's more about the Dominion attack on Thayd, the Falkrin city and the Pell in the Stormtalon dungeon.
From my understanding Algoroc leads to a kind of wild west zone after it? If so, that's the one I'll choose.
Both Algoroc and Celestion lead to the same zone after, iirc.
Well, after you're done with them, you hit level 14+ and head to Thayd, then after you do the initial stuff there, you're off to Galeras. After Galeras is Whitevale, and leveling is exactly the same for everyone for both factions past that point(Zone wise).
That's probably the weakest part of Wildstar's leveling is the complete lack of choice past level 20ish. Otherwise I don't think anyone would do Whitevale.
From my understanding Algoroc leads to a kind of wild west zone after it? If so, that's the one I'll choose.
Both Algoroc and Celestion lead to the same zone after, iirc.
Well, after you're done with them, you hit level 14+ and head to Thayd, then after you do the initial stuff there, you're off to Galeras. After Galeras is Whitevale, and leveling is exactly the same for everyone for both factions past that point(Zone wise).
That's probably the weakest part of Wildstar's leveling is the complete lack of choice past level 20ish. Otherwise I don't think anyone would do Whitevale.
Whitevale ... well, it certainly was white. and as the only zone available, wasn't like we had a choice.
I didn't hate Whitevale, but it overstayed it's welcome by a level or two. But after Whitevale came Farside and then Wilderrun, both pretty good and well done zones.
if you really want to try it, then go for it. I have loved the game since I started. I feel like reading this thread gives you a much bigger "doom & gloom" impression than there actually is.
QFT. I find that there are 3 current categories of bitching:
1- "Raiding attunement is too hard, too much face-wall." Well guess what. Not everyone will be able to raid within the first 30 days of playing, and some people wont ever. Raiding is hard. The very first runs of every major raid content in WoW history were hard, then Blizzard nerfed them so more people could play them. Anyone from Death and Taxes in the day will tell you they all worked VERY HARD to get those first kills. We are still in the early days of Wildstar raiding. Its hard. Its also not the only thing there is to do post-level cap. And like everyone said, if you cant raid and dont have fun after endgame, drop the subscription. Its not like its a cell phone contract.
2- "Game content in general is hard. I want to stand in one place and hit 16 different skills." If this is the gripe, well, every other MMO worth its salt should have already taught you (a) don't stand in stupid and (b) dead dpsers & healers do zero dps and zero heals.
3- "there is some technical difficulty and so game is stupid." or "there are balance issues with my favorite class". Well, welcome to every MMO made, ever.
In general the storyline is awesome, the art is awesome, the play-style is fast and furious, and is challenging from level 15 or so on. Challenges, housing, Pvp, events, adventures are all fun, and anyone can do them. Sometimes we gamers lose sight of whats fun for what isn't perfect.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
It's funny you bring up WoW, which now releases every raid with four tiers of difficulty (LFR < Flex < Normal < Hard) because they learned a very valuable lesson: If a majority of your player base never gets to see content because you tuned it for the hyper-minority of players like Death and Taxes, your game is in trouble. In a funny but ultimately meaningless aside, DnT doesn't have a single post about WildStar on their front page. The only two games they mention on the first page of news are SW:ToR and FF14, both of which have raid difficulty tiers.
Also, hand waving peoples concerns away with passive aggressive calls of it being nothing but 'bitching' is really goosey.
It's funny you bring up WoW, which now releases every raid with four tiers of difficulty (LFR < Flex < Normal < Hard) because they learned a very valuable lesson: If a majority of your player base never gets to see content because you tuned it for the hyper-minority of players like Death and Taxes, your game is in trouble. In a funny but ultimately meaningless aside, DnT doesn't have a single post about WildStar on their front page. The only two games they mention on the first page of news are SW:ToR and FF14, both of which have raid difficulty tiers.
Also, hand waving peoples concerns away with passive aggressive calls of it being nothing but 'bitching' is really goosey.
Yeah, this is something I've come slowly and somewhat reluctantly to as a conclusion in terms of raids. If no one but the most hardcore of the hardcore can make it and see the content, then you have made a bad MMO from a PvE raid perspective. And in Wildstar given it's current broken PvP state, the PvE treadmill and raids are the only game in town.
My experiences in WoW in the past gave me the mindset that there should be some element of exclusivity, but the arguments for that have eroded for me and many others over time as real life and different game design desires and new perspectives on the state of the genre in general have come about. It's about time, and money, and having genuine fun, not banging one's head on a wall and paying for the privilege in time and money.
+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The exclusivity comes in the form of achievements, special mounts/titles and better gear (the last one is actually a place where I think WoW has faltered, hard mode gear upgrades aren't better enough in my mind), which I am 100% fine with. I don't have an issue with tangential exclusivity, I think it's important to give guilds like DnT something to do. That's not my style of play, but it's a style of play I support...just not at the expense of every other style of play. This becomes especially important when raid content is meant to be part of your story arc.
What, specifically, are you not satisfied with? I ask because generalized posts like this get seen by new players who may or may not share those expectations. It's much more useful to go into a bit more detail and say what's not working for you, in particular, and whether those problems are something with a fix on the way (see Rune system), whether they're tougher to solve (population imbalance, raid logistics), or whether they're intrinsic to the game (content difficulty).
I know you weren't talking to me here, but I thought I'd give my specific thoughts here.
Things that bother me about Wildstar:
1. No casual PvE content: Done with your raid and want to relax for a bit, pug a couple dungeons? Nope -- pugging dungeons is extremely difficult and will probably result in a large repair bill.
2. Low tolerance for failure and a lack of forgiveness mechanics (e.g., a battle rez). If you make a mistake, you die (and sometimes it's the whole raid that dies) and you're dead for the rest of the fight. Edit: Upon thinking about this entire post, and comparing it to some of WoW's early raids, I think this is where the difficulty comes from. This alone.
3. Raiding is extremely expensive: Repair bills are extreme. It costs around 25-75 gold per non-farm raid night just in repairs. Runes are ridiculously expensive. It's expensive to kit out a single spec, and it's nearly prohibitively expensive to kit out two specs. Getting crafted gear is really expensive.
4. Most of the loot sucks. Very rarely will something drop and a class goes "Oohhh."
5. The lore isn't very interesting, well-written, or well-presented. All these mobs aren't particularly interesting or iconic.
6. 40 man raiding is behind a 3+ month long attunement process (!!!).
They're doing something to fix 4 and 6, which is nice.
Things that I like about Wildstar:
1. Telegraphs -- brilliant. It increases the clarity of mechanics, making it obvious what to dodge and what not to dodge. Also, lining up your own telegraphs is actually pretty fun.
2. Outside of the criticisms above, raiding is fairly solid. Many boss fights have some really fun and interesting mechanics. X89 in particular is an outstanding raid encounter with a fantastic core mechanic: It's as good as or better than any raid in World of Warcraft.
3. Costumes and dye are really nice -- I have a golden suit of armor right now that looks pretty badass.
4. Movement mechanics -- Dashing, double jumps, pounce (and related abilities) are really fun.
Things that I'm on the fence about:
1. The LAS system. In the history of MMOs, there's only a single game where a limit action bar system worked brilliantly, and that's the original Guild Wars. I think that's because (1) the mechanics were super explicit with simple rules, (2) there were a ton of abilities, and (3) you could dual-class. This resulted in a system with hundreds of totally viable combinations, and it was extremely fun to sit around thinking about brilliant LAS combos across your 8-man group. In this game, however, the LAS system seems like an overly-tight constraint on your toolbox.
2. Interrupt Armor. IA is half of the difficulty of dungeons -- coordinating the right interrupts in order to maximize MOO uptime on trash, in order to clear faster in order to get Silver. Then again, it feels a bit better than WoW's practice of uninterruptible mobs.
Would anyone happen to have an extra invite code to spare? I realize they may have been given out at this point, but I guess it's worth a try and ask.
My workgroup's gaming night is this evening and I managed to get everyone interested, but I'm short one code. PM me if possible.
ps. I already sent an e-mail to Carabine, I figured that I might as well try to get more than just one. I work in a large firm where pretty much everyone is a gamer and I'm sure that if "infect" a few people here, the rest of the floor will follow. I want this game to work.
Edit: Is Pergo still the default best choice for Dominion PVP or is Stormtalon a viable choice? I keep hearing about Revive as well. I want to make sure we get all the potential out of this game to get them hooked and server population will most likely be a factor.
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Also, hand waving peoples concerns away with passive aggressive calls of it being nothing but 'bitching' is really goosey.
I apologize for being "goosey". In my vernacular, "bitching" about something just means complaining. They are complaints.
I guess all I wanted to say was that many of the complaints really only apply to a certain subset of players. I do understand that everyone wants to raid and see content; like with every other game I imagine that some of the endgame content will become more accessible over time, either due to nerfs, improvements in non-raid gear, etc. And if that doesnt happen soon enough for enough people, I imagine they will leave, and thats ok. Its a game, not a life sentence.
The concept of raid "tiers' seems great (I havent played WoW in 3 years), maybe WS will adopt that too. I'll be though that I could go find people on the WoW forums *complaining* about how this devalues their uber-raid guild's efforts, noobs getting too much too easy, etc etc,. Gamers will always find something to *complain* about. Its too bad, because most of these games are really actually fun...
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Also, hand waving peoples concerns away with passive aggressive calls of it being nothing but 'bitching' is really goosey.
I apologize for being "goosey". In my vernacular, "bitching" about something just means complaining. They are complaints.
I guess all I wanted to say was that many of the complaints really only apply to a certain subset of players. I do understand that everyone wants to raid and see content; like with every other game I imagine that some of the endgame content will become more accessible over time, either due to nerfs, improvements in non-raid gear, etc. And if that doesnt happen soon enough for enough people, I imagine they will leave, and thats ok. Its a game, not a life sentence.
The concept of raid "tiers' seems great (I havent played WoW in 3 years), maybe WS will adopt that too. I'll be though that I could go find people on the WoW forums *complaining* about how this devalues their uber-raid guild's efforts, noobs getting too much too easy, etc etc,. Gamers will always find something to *complain* about. Its too bad, because most of these games are really actually fun...
Yes there will always be some level of complaining, but when the level rises to a cacophony and you are hemorrhaging players as a result it moves beyond "standard" and becomes an actual problem. It doesn't matter how fun some aspects of the game are if large chunks of the playerbase are alienated or running out of things to do and have fun with.
This is specifically why you cannot cater to the hardcore crowd when making an MMO. You make sure they have stuff to do, but you can't make it the primary focus of your game if you want it to be successful in the long term. Other game models you can do that with, but not an MMO. The development costs are too high and the main source of income is not from the hardcore playerbase.
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+7
Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
Off the topic of raids, I found a cheap and fairly easy way (for Scientists) to gather logicleaf:
Go to the primal life section of farside, scan the chocobo looking birds to tame them, get on and use their Dig ability. The ride lasts about two minutes, so the Dig cooldown makes it so you can get four applications in per bird. You generally get a bunch of tier 3 gathering material, aside from wood. Logicleaf is the only herb and seed I've gotten from that, though.
This is specifically why you cannot cater to the hardcore crowd when making an MMO. You make sure they have stuff to do, but you can't make it the primary focus of your game if you want it to be successful in the long term. Other game models you can do that with, but not an MMO. The development costs are too high and the main source of income is not from the hardcore playerbase.
I'll say this and shut up (probably)- that was an excellent response and encapsulation of what WS actually does need to address for long term success. I agree 1000%, and the data are pretty clear on that. In fact I think your statements do turn me around on some of my viewpoints about the "complaints". Thank you.
I wonder if the focus was intentionally to be so hardcore, or if the developers actually played the content all the way through themselves before releasing it.....
In the meantime though, I guess would still recommend WS to anyone thinking about trying a new MMO for a month or two. Its pretty fun. Having said that, i'm sure I'll fall into the category of "moving on after a month at level cap", if only because I'm too old to raid 3 nights a week and spend the other 4 farming to pay for repairs Real life has a way of catching up as you get older. WoW has learned that us old farts, despite being terrible players, have money to spend too. And we'll do it if we have fun.
Well, in other news, STL silver down, with a Pug, from Dungeon finder with @Artereis@GONG-00@Jetahzi are 1/4 of the way to go. We got through KV, and now know all the fights and most the tricks, so time to silver that bad boy. Then Skullcano, and Swordmaiden, which we've dived into some. Good Job dudes.
The exclusivity comes in the form of achievements, special mounts/titles and better gear (the last one is actually a place where I think WoW has faltered, hard mode gear upgrades aren't better enough in my mind), which I am 100% fine with. I don't have an issue with tangential exclusivity, I think it's important to give guilds like DnT something to do. That's not my style of play, but it's a style of play I support...just not at the expense of every other style of play. This becomes especially important when raid content is meant to be part of your story arc.
I completely agree that Blizzard needs to reward the mythic raiders more but I'm not sure how. I certainly don't think the answer is removing the bottom two difficulties. I wish Wildstar had LFR I'd buy the game then.
So subbed back up, appears exile guild is dead, my Medic is worthless in PVP because heals are bad apparently and should be punished.
Rolled an Engy exile which i liked, until espers facerolled me and got annoyed.
Sooooo....I rolled a Dom Esper and satisfied my pervy need for a female redhead character.....and god damn does this class own face. Like, when did they make the Tk strike a mobile builder? And I can stack TK storm on the same target multiple times?And hit R and Pfrenzy and be back at full psipoints and just spam spam spam dps all over everyone....does anyone else think this is sooo in need of a nerf bat? Maybe its just these low levels im playing at but....damn.
Also I could use a Dom guild invite, who do I need to message in game?
woo hoo account is active again, only took 10 days. But after adding a subscription for some reason it doesn't kick in until tomorrow.
Hello XXXXXX,
Thank you for your patience as we investigated this issue further.
I've completed a review of your account's ban and contrary to the previous response, I believe your account does not fit the criteria for the violation that led to the block. I have reversed the action taken and have noted the account accordingly. You should be able to access Wildstar as of right now. If you are still unable to access the account, please let me know.
So I managed to find enough keys to get my work colleagues in the game last night. I had high hopes - we love games and chances where good that they would get hooked past the first few levels. They all activated their keys... and the the servers went down all over NA for us. For the entire evening.
The keys will expire by the time we play again next week, but they are also quite annoyed with the fact that on their first try they saw a major flaw that would have critically impaired their ability to make sure we actually get a few hours of play together, not to mention that all servers had low pop.
Not a good start. I'll try it again next week if I can find enough keys though.
Some hardware went down in the NCSoft data center. The actual game servers were apparently working but I was running around for most of the evening after a few disconnects. The place was practically a ghost town, though.
There was a DDOS attack on the NCSoft Servers that caused a few games to go down, it wasn't just Wildstar. It wasn't a hardware failure. The game is fun and has quite a bit of content to chew on if you have a limited play schedule. There is more coming also.
1. The LAS system. In the history of MMOs, there's only a single game where a limit action bar system worked brilliantly, and that's the original Guild Wars. I think that's because (1) the mechanics were super explicit with simple rules, (2) there were a ton of abilities, and (3) you could dual-class. This resulted in a system with hundreds of totally viable combinations, and it was extremely fun to sit around thinking about brilliant LAS combos across your 8-man group. In this game, however, the LAS system seems like an overly-tight constraint on your toolbox.
Wildstars LAS has two basic problems with it that hinder it.
First: The way the abilities designed, and the way combat is designed, you don't actually get to make too many choices. Most people are going to want a CC break(with every class only having 1), 1-3 CC(which is normally most if not all of the CC for a given class), and then maybe 0-2 Movement based abilities. By the time that's all said and done, you've got 3-5 spaces left of the LAS to fill up, and since CC and CC breaks, and movement are all very situational, you have 3-5 abilities for rotation, which ends up spammy most of the time.
Second: Most the abilities are really, really basic in function, with little synergy between them. They rarely have any complexities to them, and usually there's 0 alternatives. This means you look at a fight and see X, Y, and Z, and go, I need abilities A, B, and C, on my bars. That's fine in a lot of ways, but it's also very very lacking in others.
Ideally, every ability would have a direct competitor, each doing slightly different things(for example: each class should have 2 CC breaks, and for one class, one of the CC breaks heals when used, the other does movement). Secondly, since so many abilities are basically hard coded into counter design(CC abilities, for example), the LAS just needs to be bigger. An additional 2 slots on the LAS would allow for more flexibility and more complicated rotations in LAS selection, IMO.
But that's just my take on it anyways. I think LAS is still better than old school MMO design with a several dozen abilities, it just could be done better.
Think I'm at a good place where I'm excited every time others are in here excited about the game, but ready to take a break and churn through some other games and see what gets added.
Game has a great mental payoff when you finally clear something but you feel terrible when your the one guy holding people up or wiping
There was a DDOS attack on the NCSoft Servers that caused a few games to go down, it wasn't just Wildstar. It wasn't a hardware failure. The game is fun and has quite a bit of content to chew on if you have a limited play schedule. There is more coming also.
Was it the same asshat as last time? At this point I am starting to wonder if there is some WoW fanboi trying really hard to make Wildstar look bad.
would it be different if they upped all the drops at least and made it worth the time to actually learn and do these fights ? i mean it just sounds like for the massive amount of work you have to do you don't get shit for a reward.
It would be an improvement, yes, but isn't the overall issue. It's that fights aren't always just "hardcore" it's that they're just frustrating. By the sounds of that description you've got roughly 8-12 people that if even ONE misses their cue it's a wipe. It sounds like it's a long and boring fight as the mechanic seems poorly thought out. No, it doesn't help that the carrot at the end is stupidly small, but there's definitely more to the problem.
Erm, maybe he left something out, but thats not even close to the case.
10 Second cast means 8-9 sec of the boss not doing anything. 3 Warriors can get 12 combines interrupt (suck it up, spec t8 kick) on short ass CDs. Enough that the three of them should be fine and everyone else in the raid (17 people) can spec 1 interrupt and if something goes wrong have the RL yell "SMASH FACE KEYBOARD" and everyone else spams interrupts and safety is assured.
That hardly seems even remotely difficult. Like I said, maybe he left something out, but this is hardly difficult to organize.
So we tried out your strategy last night.
The problem with the strategy is that the warriors do no damage when they're spec'd this way. And the longer the fight goes on, the higher the chance is that someone will miss their interrupt. Also, the warriors in my group were telling me that it's not trivial to hit all four interrupts and drop d-grid at the same time. (I suppose we could've had them on a separate rotation for defense grid, but still.)
Anyway, we ended up going back to 4 teams of 2 people interrupting. This is still an awful, punishing miniboss.
It did result in a rather humorous pull last night though--
There was a DDOS attack on the NCSoft Servers that caused a few games to go down, it wasn't just Wildstar. It wasn't a hardware failure. The game is fun and has quite a bit of content to chew on if you have a limited play schedule. There is more coming also.
Was it the same asshat as last time? At this point I am starting to wonder if there is some WoW fanboi trying really hard to make Wildstar look bad.
No idea, but the way the dude writes his posts on twitter follows the same as last time. It's really annoying either way.
I've been running vet adventures as a healer and I'm getting slightly bored. None of the healing is challenging at all and I can spam 2 buttons to keep everyone topped off forever. However, the one vet dungeon that I've tried was a small disaster where we killed the first boss in STL and then could not kill the next mini boss at all which might have been my fault due to lack of healing output. I'm at 1950 support power and I'm equipped in adventure blues with a single epic though I still have unruned items I need to finish slotting. I'm an esper if that matters.
Posts
Certainly also true. Population balance seems to be a significant issue currently. I know we've gotten a large influx of players from other servers in Revive, who unanimously express how much nicer and busier our Exile side is than what they had left.
Edit: TotP context
While I'd probably be totally fine with the current end game if I was playing mostly solo, it's not really possibly for my wife. She's not a stellar player so she'd never be able to manage raiding or dungeons, perhaps adventures, but I just eliminated most of the end game right there.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
"...only mights and maybes."
For everyone, this is how you do VOIP discipline. If only every raid could sound this clean...
What, specifically, are you not satisfied with? I ask because generalized posts like this get seen by new players who may or may not share those expectations. It's much more useful to go into a bit more detail and say what's not working for you, in particular, and whether those problems are something with a fix on the way (see Rune system), whether they're tougher to solve (population imbalance, raid logistics), or whether they're intrinsic to the game (content difficulty).
Algoroc is faster, Celestion is larger. Both have equal amounts of story exposition, and both are bright and flashy compared to the dismal rainy Ellevar.
So you could go with either one really.
Both Algoroc and Celestion lead to the same zone after, iirc.
Algoroc and Celestion both lead to Galeras. Algoroc is a wild west style zone, very frontiery. Galeras has that a bit too, but it's more about the Dominion attack on Thayd, the Falkrin city and the Pell in the Stormtalon dungeon.
Well, after you're done with them, you hit level 14+ and head to Thayd, then after you do the initial stuff there, you're off to Galeras. After Galeras is Whitevale, and leveling is exactly the same for everyone for both factions past that point(Zone wise).
That's probably the weakest part of Wildstar's leveling is the complete lack of choice past level 20ish. Otherwise I don't think anyone would do Whitevale.
Whitevale ... well, it certainly was white. and as the only zone available, wasn't like we had a choice.
I didn't hate Whitevale, but it overstayed it's welcome by a level or two. But after Whitevale came Farside and then Wilderrun, both pretty good and well done zones.
QFT. I find that there are 3 current categories of bitching:
1- "Raiding attunement is too hard, too much face-wall." Well guess what. Not everyone will be able to raid within the first 30 days of playing, and some people wont ever. Raiding is hard. The very first runs of every major raid content in WoW history were hard, then Blizzard nerfed them so more people could play them. Anyone from Death and Taxes in the day will tell you they all worked VERY HARD to get those first kills. We are still in the early days of Wildstar raiding. Its hard. Its also not the only thing there is to do post-level cap. And like everyone said, if you cant raid and dont have fun after endgame, drop the subscription. Its not like its a cell phone contract.
2- "Game content in general is hard. I want to stand in one place and hit 16 different skills." If this is the gripe, well, every other MMO worth its salt should have already taught you (a) don't stand in stupid and (b) dead dpsers & healers do zero dps and zero heals.
3- "there is some technical difficulty and so game is stupid." or "there are balance issues with my favorite class". Well, welcome to every MMO made, ever.
In general the storyline is awesome, the art is awesome, the play-style is fast and furious, and is challenging from level 15 or so on. Challenges, housing, Pvp, events, adventures are all fun, and anyone can do them. Sometimes we gamers lose sight of whats fun for what isn't perfect.
Also, hand waving peoples concerns away with passive aggressive calls of it being nothing but 'bitching' is really goosey.
Yeah, this is something I've come slowly and somewhat reluctantly to as a conclusion in terms of raids. If no one but the most hardcore of the hardcore can make it and see the content, then you have made a bad MMO from a PvE raid perspective. And in Wildstar given it's current broken PvP state, the PvE treadmill and raids are the only game in town.
My experiences in WoW in the past gave me the mindset that there should be some element of exclusivity, but the arguments for that have eroded for me and many others over time as real life and different game design desires and new perspectives on the state of the genre in general have come about. It's about time, and money, and having genuine fun, not banging one's head on a wall and paying for the privilege in time and money.
I know you weren't talking to me here, but I thought I'd give my specific thoughts here.
Things that bother me about Wildstar:
1. No casual PvE content: Done with your raid and want to relax for a bit, pug a couple dungeons? Nope -- pugging dungeons is extremely difficult and will probably result in a large repair bill.
2. Low tolerance for failure and a lack of forgiveness mechanics (e.g., a battle rez). If you make a mistake, you die (and sometimes it's the whole raid that dies) and you're dead for the rest of the fight. Edit: Upon thinking about this entire post, and comparing it to some of WoW's early raids, I think this is where the difficulty comes from. This alone.
3. Raiding is extremely expensive: Repair bills are extreme. It costs around 25-75 gold per non-farm raid night just in repairs. Runes are ridiculously expensive. It's expensive to kit out a single spec, and it's nearly prohibitively expensive to kit out two specs. Getting crafted gear is really expensive.
4. Most of the loot sucks. Very rarely will something drop and a class goes "Oohhh."
5. The lore isn't very interesting, well-written, or well-presented. All these mobs aren't particularly interesting or iconic.
6. 40 man raiding is behind a 3+ month long attunement process (!!!).
They're doing something to fix 4 and 6, which is nice.
Things that I like about Wildstar:
1. Telegraphs -- brilliant. It increases the clarity of mechanics, making it obvious what to dodge and what not to dodge. Also, lining up your own telegraphs is actually pretty fun.
2. Outside of the criticisms above, raiding is fairly solid. Many boss fights have some really fun and interesting mechanics. X89 in particular is an outstanding raid encounter with a fantastic core mechanic: It's as good as or better than any raid in World of Warcraft.
3. Costumes and dye are really nice -- I have a golden suit of armor right now that looks pretty badass.
4. Movement mechanics -- Dashing, double jumps, pounce (and related abilities) are really fun.
Things that I'm on the fence about:
1. The LAS system. In the history of MMOs, there's only a single game where a limit action bar system worked brilliantly, and that's the original Guild Wars. I think that's because (1) the mechanics were super explicit with simple rules, (2) there were a ton of abilities, and (3) you could dual-class. This resulted in a system with hundreds of totally viable combinations, and it was extremely fun to sit around thinking about brilliant LAS combos across your 8-man group. In this game, however, the LAS system seems like an overly-tight constraint on your toolbox.
2. Interrupt Armor. IA is half of the difficulty of dungeons -- coordinating the right interrupts in order to maximize MOO uptime on trash, in order to clear faster in order to get Silver. Then again, it feels a bit better than WoW's practice of uninterruptible mobs.
My workgroup's gaming night is this evening and I managed to get everyone interested, but I'm short one code. PM me if possible.
ps. I already sent an e-mail to Carabine, I figured that I might as well try to get more than just one. I work in a large firm where pretty much everyone is a gamer and I'm sure that if "infect" a few people here, the rest of the floor will follow. I want this game to work.
Edit: Is Pergo still the default best choice for Dominion PVP or is Stormtalon a viable choice? I keep hearing about Revive as well. I want to make sure we get all the potential out of this game to get them hooked and server population will most likely be a factor.
I guess all I wanted to say was that many of the complaints really only apply to a certain subset of players. I do understand that everyone wants to raid and see content; like with every other game I imagine that some of the endgame content will become more accessible over time, either due to nerfs, improvements in non-raid gear, etc. And if that doesnt happen soon enough for enough people, I imagine they will leave, and thats ok. Its a game, not a life sentence.
The concept of raid "tiers' seems great (I havent played WoW in 3 years), maybe WS will adopt that too. I'll be though that I could go find people on the WoW forums *complaining* about how this devalues their uber-raid guild's efforts, noobs getting too much too easy, etc etc,. Gamers will always find something to *complain* about. Its too bad, because most of these games are really actually fun...
Yes there will always be some level of complaining, but when the level rises to a cacophony and you are hemorrhaging players as a result it moves beyond "standard" and becomes an actual problem. It doesn't matter how fun some aspects of the game are if large chunks of the playerbase are alienated or running out of things to do and have fun with.
This is specifically why you cannot cater to the hardcore crowd when making an MMO. You make sure they have stuff to do, but you can't make it the primary focus of your game if you want it to be successful in the long term. Other game models you can do that with, but not an MMO. The development costs are too high and the main source of income is not from the hardcore playerbase.
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Go to the primal life section of farside, scan the chocobo looking birds to tame them, get on and use their Dig ability. The ride lasts about two minutes, so the Dig cooldown makes it so you can get four applications in per bird. You generally get a bunch of tier 3 gathering material, aside from wood. Logicleaf is the only herb and seed I've gotten from that, though.
I'll say this and shut up (probably)- that was an excellent response and encapsulation of what WS actually does need to address for long term success. I agree 1000%, and the data are pretty clear on that. In fact I think your statements do turn me around on some of my viewpoints about the "complaints". Thank you.
I wonder if the focus was intentionally to be so hardcore, or if the developers actually played the content all the way through themselves before releasing it.....
In the meantime though, I guess would still recommend WS to anyone thinking about trying a new MMO for a month or two. Its pretty fun. Having said that, i'm sure I'll fall into the category of "moving on after a month at level cap", if only because I'm too old to raid 3 nights a week and spend the other 4 farming to pay for repairs
I completely agree that Blizzard needs to reward the mythic raiders more but I'm not sure how. I certainly don't think the answer is removing the bottom two difficulties. I wish Wildstar had LFR I'd buy the game then.
Rolled an Engy exile which i liked, until espers facerolled me and got annoyed.
Sooooo....I rolled a Dom Esper and satisfied my pervy need for a female redhead character.....and god damn does this class own face. Like, when did they make the Tk strike a mobile builder? And I can stack TK storm on the same target multiple times?And hit R and Pfrenzy and be back at full psipoints and just spam spam spam dps all over everyone....does anyone else think this is sooo in need of a nerf bat? Maybe its just these low levels im playing at but....damn.
Also I could use a Dom guild invite, who do I need to message in game?
Hello XXXXXX,
Thank you for your patience as we investigated this issue further.
I've completed a review of your account's ban and contrary to the previous response, I believe your account does not fit the criteria for the violation that led to the block. I have reversed the action taken and have noted the account accordingly. You should be able to access Wildstar as of right now. If you are still unable to access the account, please let me know.
Thanks,
James
WildStar Support Team
The keys will expire by the time we play again next week, but they are also quite annoyed with the fact that on their first try they saw a major flaw that would have critically impaired their ability to make sure we actually get a few hours of play together, not to mention that all servers had low pop.
Not a good start. I'll try it again next week if I can find enough keys though.
Wildstars LAS has two basic problems with it that hinder it.
First: The way the abilities designed, and the way combat is designed, you don't actually get to make too many choices. Most people are going to want a CC break(with every class only having 1), 1-3 CC(which is normally most if not all of the CC for a given class), and then maybe 0-2 Movement based abilities. By the time that's all said and done, you've got 3-5 spaces left of the LAS to fill up, and since CC and CC breaks, and movement are all very situational, you have 3-5 abilities for rotation, which ends up spammy most of the time.
Second: Most the abilities are really, really basic in function, with little synergy between them. They rarely have any complexities to them, and usually there's 0 alternatives. This means you look at a fight and see X, Y, and Z, and go, I need abilities A, B, and C, on my bars. That's fine in a lot of ways, but it's also very very lacking in others.
Ideally, every ability would have a direct competitor, each doing slightly different things(for example: each class should have 2 CC breaks, and for one class, one of the CC breaks heals when used, the other does movement). Secondly, since so many abilities are basically hard coded into counter design(CC abilities, for example), the LAS just needs to be bigger. An additional 2 slots on the LAS would allow for more flexibility and more complicated rotations in LAS selection, IMO.
But that's just my take on it anyways. I think LAS is still better than old school MMO design with a several dozen abilities, it just could be done better.
Game has a great mental payoff when you finally clear something but you feel terrible when your the one guy holding people up or wiping
@Artereis @Noizlanif @Jetahzi,
That is a feeling I know all too well...
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So we tried out your strategy last night.
The problem with the strategy is that the warriors do no damage when they're spec'd this way. And the longer the fight goes on, the higher the chance is that someone will miss their interrupt. Also, the warriors in my group were telling me that it's not trivial to hit all four interrupts and drop d-grid at the same time. (I suppose we could've had them on a separate rotation for defense grid, but still.)
Anyway, we ended up going back to 4 teams of 2 people interrupting. This is still an awful, punishing miniboss.
It did result in a rather humorous pull last night though--
No idea, but the way the dude writes his posts on twitter follows the same as last time. It's really annoying either way.
I've been running vet adventures as a healer and I'm getting slightly bored. None of the healing is challenging at all and I can spam 2 buttons to keep everyone topped off forever. However, the one vet dungeon that I've tried was a small disaster where we killed the first boss in STL and then could not kill the next mini boss at all which might have been my fault due to lack of healing output. I'm at 1950 support power and I'm equipped in adventure blues with a single epic though I still have unruned items I need to finish slotting. I'm an esper if that matters.